Agreed, Mythic didnt fail because a third faction was missing, they screwed up their own game through stupid choices and had no idea what they were doing. Fact is WHO should of been a decent pvp game, the dev's just blew it and a third faction wouldnt of saved it either
"If all you can say is... "It's awful, it's not innovative, it's ugly, it's blah.." Then you're an unimaginative and unpolished excuse for human life" -eburn
If war40k revolves around capped warzones or skirmish systems where one side cant simply overwhelm the other with outraging numbers (aka zerg the shit outta them), 2 factions would work just as well as 3, 4, 5 or 27.
IF this game is to be another Global Agenda, this is a far worse problem than having few factions. I will go play Counterstrike with WH40K skins, it's free and pretty much the same.
I expect this to be a MMO, so no crappy battlegrounds and artificial limits and "fair fights".
WAR DIDNT FAIL BECAUSE IT ONLY HAD 2 FACTIONS. It failed because t4 is a complete and utter bore. It failed becuase it was buggy, laggy. slow and people turned it into a keep/bo trading/circle-jerk zerg snoozefest. War had lots of character balance issues. Also WAR has terrible end game PVE. A third faction in war would solve none of its problems. At least they finally did something with the city sieges but alas for me and many others it was too little too late.
IM waiting for more details on this game before flooding the internets with THE SKY IS FALLING O NOES
If war40k revolves around capped warzones or skirmish systems where one side cant simply overwhelm the other with outraging numbers (aka zerg the shit outta them), 2 factions would work just as well as 3, 4, 5 or 27.
IF this game is to be another Global Agenda, this is a far worse problem than having few factions. I will go play Counterstrike with WH40K skins, it's free and pretty much the same.
I expect this to be a MMO, so no crappy battlegrounds and artificial limits and "fair fights".
And I expect this to be fun, and last long.
You have plenty of moribund games to play following your idiotic idea of whats enjoyment, I'd suggest you to buy WAR, feel free to join the winning side in any game server, and satisfy your needs of zerging like a skill less moron until the game goes down because nobody besides you and idiots like you enjoy that crappy excuse for a gameplay.
WAR DIDNT FAIL BECAUSE IT ONLY HAD 2 FACTIONS. It failed because t4 is a complete and utter bore. It failed becuase it was buggy, laggy. slow and people turned it into a keep/bo trading/circle-jerk zerg snoozefest. War had lots of character balance issues. Also WAR has terrible end game PVE. A third faction in war would solve none of its problems. At least they finally did something with the city sieges but alas for me and many others it was too little too late.
IM waiting for more details on this game before flooding the internets with THE SKY IS FALLING O NOES
T4 is an utter bore exactly because it has only 2 factions.
You have points A and B. How much variety can you have if you run from A to B and B to A all the time? If you add C then you can choose A-B, B-C and A-C and there is a 2-dimensional space these 3 points define. It is very simple, really. Take pen and paper if you have trouble visualizing it. THE MAJOR problem of T4 endgame in WAR is that it has only 2 factions, which make it a single-dimensional conflict that progresses along that single, predictable line. There can be no real deviation from that same old line because it is a 1-dimensional array. It is a line, not a plane, not a space - it is a line that you can go up and down, period. Imagine chess whose board is one space wide - fun, no? T4 would be AWESOME, right as it is right now, if they had 3 factions. This is the greatest tragedy of WAR - the way they completely subjected their map design to 2-faction play now makes it nigh impossible to fix this fundamental flaw.
Basic math folks. 2 points define 1-dimensional space. 3 points define a 2-dimensional one. 4 points for a 3-dimensional space and so on. Sorry but even tic-tac-toe is played on a 2-dimensional board. Mythic's decision to have their endgame play out in a 1-dimensional gamespace must rank as one of the dumbest and most clueless game design decisions in HISTORY. If THQ goes this same route you don't have to be a genius to predict what is going to happen. The only way 2-faction can work here is if their PvP is wholly instanced and there is no world PvP, especially game-impacting one at all. Either way, I'm not interested.
I don't mind two factions, though i prefer a bigger number as well, at least 5 let's say. I have seen it working nicely on Face of Mankind (which has 8) and even earlier on single player cRPGs that offer multiple factions as a means of helping you defining your character's choices and background. So, i see it as a tool than enchances roleplaying and under that scope, i fail to see how three factions make it so much different than two... Instead of black & white you add grey, instead of good & evil you add neutral - not very interesting in both cases. It needs more choices to start becoming an interesting political/ethical/whatever game.
On the other hand i had a lot of fun playing Warhammer Online for what it is and under no circumstances i consider it a "fail" game. And all that time i was playing WAR, i have seen a lot of people bashing the game, but for things like lag, performance, bugs, class and realm imbalance - not for its number of factions. It was only a small fraction of players that would bash it for this, and it's not a coincidence they were the DAOC players...
"Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars combat, exploration and character progression. In Alganon, in addition to these we've added the fourth pillar to the equation: Copy & Paste."
I don't mind two factions, though i prefer a bigger number as well, at least 5 let's say. I have seen it working nicely on Face of Mankind (which has 8) and even earlier on single player cRPGs that offer multiple factions as a means of helping you defining your character's choices and background. So, i see it as a tool than enchances roleplaying and under that scope, i fail to see how three factions make it so much different than two... Instead of black & white you add grey, instead of good & evil you add neutral - not very interesting in both cases. It needs more choices to start becoming an interesting political/ethical/whatever game.
On the other hand i had a lot of fun playing Warhammer Online for what it is and under no circumstances i consider it a "fail" game. And all that time i was playing WAR, i have seen a lot of people bashing the game, but for things like lag, performance, bugs, class and realm imbalance - not for its number of factions. It was only a small fraction of players that would bash it for this, and it's not a coincidence they were the DAOC players...
3-factions does not mean black - grey -white. This is still 1 dimensional game design. Think rather "red - green -blue". The davs need to get off their cultural bias of "good vs evil" (which is just cultural bias and nothing more tbs) if they want to create a dynamic and yet stable world PvP metagame.
If they still need to create a good vs evil thing to appeal to the cultural framework then a much better way would be to make ALL factions good from their own perspective and evil from everybody elses. In fact I cannot wait to see GW2 WvW in action - servers fighting each other - everybody is "good" and a "hero" from their own perspective, that's the way to do it elegantly.
And besides, multi-factional design is much closer to the IP than the same old good-vs-evil crap, as any WH40K geek would happily point out and argument with decades and mountains of lore.
And no, I didn't play DAoC but I'm an avid WAR player. Sorry, but this "Altdorf to Inevitable City and back again" gets old in a jiffy. For all the good stuff in that game that I'm still playing it for, this really is THE most massive flaw in the endgame - repetetiveness. On the other hand, if it is this day-in-day-out always the same old route thing actually appealing to the "masses" then I can do nothing else but simply leave the genre because I can go didly-up-diddly-down that same old ladder only so many times.
You people are just having a knee-jerk reaction to WARs disappointing gameplay. Warhammer Online didn't work out, but it was NOT due to there only being two factions. Besides, WoW has two factions and it seems to be doing just fine.
Now before you say "But WoW is a PvE game and WAR is a PvP game!" Realize that this is not true. At all. WoW has lots of PvP content and WAR has far, far too much PvE content.
yeah WoW has PvP... BUT IT'S ALL INSTANCED...
if they do make an RvR like game (here's hoping) you absolutely NEED more than 2 factions... it doesn't matter too much when there's instances which artificially balance the side's numbers... but if it's open world a 60% vs 40% population makes a huge difference. 3 factions help loads with that problem.... DAoC, Planetside = worked perfectly! WAR = was horrible! nuff said
And in terms of WAR... ever been to the EU servers? probably not or you wouldn't generalize like that... yes AoE spam groups weren't a big deal on the US servers... population imbalance wasn't either.... on the EU side of things there were servers with 70% destro and 30% Order... and servers with 80% Order and 20% Destruction... oh yeah and hundreds of AoE spam groups.... oh how much fun it was...
it's not knee-jerk... it's people trying to alert the developers to these problems as early in production as possible to avoid yet ANOTHER Failhammer.... because I do believe that a lot of people would love a great Games Workshop MMO...
<S.T.E.A.L.T.H> An Agency that kicks so much ass it has to be written in all capital letters... divided by dots! www.stealth-industries.de
Originally posted by arcdevil And I expect this to be fun, and last long. You have plenty of moribund games to play following your idiotic idea of whats enjoyment, I'd suggest you to buy WAR, feel free to join the winning side in any game server, and satisfy your needs of zerging like a skill less moron until the game goes down because nobody besides you and idiots like you enjoy that crappy excuse for a gameplay.
You are making a lot of assumptions there. All totally wrong.
War isn't "fair" nor is a soccer game you "arrange". It's about tactics and strategy. With instanced pvp you just enqueue and then it's a grind. No objectives, no strategic decisions to make (where to strike, how many people to bring, diversions to make, surprise attacks, ambushes), it's just enter a small area, kill, die, rinse and repeat.
Originally posted by arcdevil people in this thread are shockingly retarded Mythic's screwup was not having 2 factions. It was happily ignoring number unbalances and letting 5 thousand people join chaos and less than 2 hundred join order, then make the gameplay a zerger paradise. If war40k revolves around capped warzones or skirmish systems where one side cant simply overwhelm the other with outraging numbers (aka zerg the shit outta them), 2 factions would work just as well as 3, 4, 5 or 27. actually, 3 factions without anti zerg systems is MUCH WORSE than 2 factions with them not only that, 3 factions bring an additional problem, the 2 strongest factions banding together against the weakest. Usually the weakest would all fed up with the situation, and either quit the game or reroll with the strongest then the strongest (now with even more backup) would trample their former allies. Despite what most tards say, this was dime a dozen in old DAOC servers.
in a nutshell, people are imbecile, and this petition is effing retarded. You'd better ask Relic/Vigil to implement active measures to control population balance and/or implement a gameplay with victoy conditions and objetives where zerging is impossible, obsolete or even plain counterproductive. Then a 2 faction game would work like charm
Rergardless of whether Order Vs destro was the downfall of Mythic. It certainly didn't slow down the process, WAR40k cannot allow orks and csm to work together or eldar and space marines to make love childs. It's as simple as that.
Mythic capping zones for population and kick out players from the zone once it reached it's limit was a lazy fix to a huge problem. They basically implemented that because they failed to properly make the servers ready for 400+vs400+ fights and now you get 100vs100. I was the the day the server finally got to the first fortress and the game crashed because mythic's servers failed to accomodate for the action that was going on.
Capping zones and making instance fights is not the solution to zergs it's just adding on to the problem and make the fights more theme parked then they already are. My ideal RvR game is a game where it has the potetional to have 500vs500vs500vs500 or more instead of small skirmishes that WAR has been reduced to. The city siege is a joke compared to what they used to tell us and the beta testing. Stop making excuses for bad ideas and embrace something new!
Hell there is a game that is F2P called Aika that is doing 100x better then WAR right now and it has multiple factions to choose from and on top of that it has a WAY bigger large scale battles then WAR... WTF does that tell you seriousely... that a F2P game just released this year is beating WAR in the RVR aspect.
I'd like to see more than 2 factions, just to emulate some of the various scenarios possible from the tabletop game.
But I think it's completely ridiculous to suggest that 3 factions are immune to population imbalances. Certainly it's less of an issue because the population is more dispersed, but Planetside had massive imbalance for almost a year because every little nub signed up as New Conglomerate and nobody went with Vanu. Trying to paint population balance as the sole reason for creating extra factions sounds... shallow. The developers aren't that stupid and most of the adults reading this thread aren't stupid enough to believe it either.
Personally I'd like to see 3 or more factions because gameplay seems to have more depth in those cases. If I get bored fighting faction A, I can find a fight against faction B. Even if it's the same gameplay with different skins, sometimes a change of scenary is all it takes. But I'm nowhere near the realm of convinced that 3 or more factions will suddenly prevent every 13 year old goth kid in the US and Europe from signing up as Chaos. There hasn't been a shred of evidence here, or even logical conjecture, to make me think otherwise.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
I'd like to see more than 2 factions, just to emulate some of the various scenarios possible from the tabletop game.
But I think it's completely ridiculous to suggest that 3 factions are immune to population imbalances. Certainly it's less of an issue because the population is more dispersed, but Planetside had massive imbalance for almost a year because every little nub signed up as New Conglomerate and nobody went with Vanu. Trying to paint population balance as the sole reason for creating extra factions sounds... shallow. The developers aren't that stupid and most of the adults reading this thread aren't stupid enough to believe it either.
Personally I'd like to see 3 or more factions because gameplay seems to have more depth in those cases. If I get bored fighting faction A, I can find a fight against faction B. Even if it's the same gameplay with different skins, sometimes a change of scenary is all it takes. But I'm nowhere near the realm of convinced that 3 or more factions will suddenly prevent every 13 year old goth kid in the US and Europe from signing up as Chaos. There hasn't been a shred of evidence here, or even logical conjecture, to make me think otherwise.
Wait wait... did you just call posters arguing that 3-faction system is inherently more stable than a 2-faction one stupid and childish?
This attitude is not going to get you far.
And did you even properly read the arguments? Who said that 3-faction games are immune to population imbalances? No one as far as I can see. The argument is that they are less sensitive to pop imbalances, especially runaway ones, and that has been argued pretty well both in theory and with actual game examples.
Additionally you are inadvertantly arguing FOR the 3-faction system with your example. If there IS a radically more popular faction then this is much more of a problem in a 2-faction than in 3-faction game. It's simple math really. Adding stuff you know, basic algebra. It won't stop every goth kid in US and Europe from signing up chaos but the overall impact on game balance will be much less pronounced than in a 2-faction game. 2-sided conflicts are inherently plagued with runaway positive feedback loops - one side is slightly more powerful, players being humans they are tend to go to the winning side more than loosing one and the problem aggravates. It is a chain reaction, a positive feedback loop that is dictated by human nature. A 3 or more faction system wont completely remove this mechanic but it has shown that the threshold of initial imbalance needed for this runaway chain reaction to take place gets massively raised. In fact, in a 2-faction system this threshold is so low that for all practical purposes it can be considered as always crossed and the runaway positive feedback loop is omnipresent. Let me further clarify what I mean:
In a 2 faction game it is enough for one faction to be 1% more populated than the other one for this runaway effect to start manifesting itself. In a 3 faction game where lower populated factions band against the stronger one, you would need that one faction to be more populous than other two put together. In a four faction system, each of the weakest factions would need to be three times less populous than the lagest one (tho 3-faction is still the most stable one, but I won't go further into that, ask a mathematician, preferably a topologist) ... See? This is why multi-faction systems are ALWAYS more stable than the 2-faction one, because 2-faction system is INHERENTLY unstable, and that is true on more levels of existence then I'd care to list. Just one example - there IS a reason why bipeds are so rare in animal world. It is crazy what amount of processing human brain has to make with each step which is basically nothing more than controlled fall - again inherently unstable system. Trying to make a biped robot walk is still one of the hardest problems in robotics while other methods of locomotion have been much easier to crack, especially three-legged ones which are the most stable and easiest to program, both on the level of algorithm and processing power required.
If you know an engineer ask him why are the steel lattices on bridges always in the form of equilateral triangles. And no, aesthetics have nothing to do with it.
While you're at it you might also ask him why is all control wiring in airplanes done in triplicate. Not 2 wires, not 4 or 5 wires but 3 wires.
Diamond is the hardest substance known to man. What is it's crystal lattice made out of? Check it out - equlateral triangles extrapolated into 3-dimensional space, aka tetrahedrons.
On the other hand, why are competetive sports played out in opposing teams, 2-factions? Because they NEED to be unstable so someone eventually gets to win. But this is definitely NOT something we want to see in a game which is supposed to run indefinitely and which is permanent. We have a basic conflict of core concepts here. A MMO is NOT a "classical" game where someone is supposed to "win" eventually and thus end the game. This is the LAST thing you want in a game that is supposed to be played indefinitely. You might have temporal and shifting 2-faction conflicts in a mmo, and that's all fun and well and the basis of all drama, but for chirissakes don't build your whole house on the inherently unstable structure.
As for more depth and variety to gameplay. Yes of course. As I mentioned before 2 points define a line, 1-dimesional space; 3 points define 2-dimensional space etc. You cannot have anything resembling any kind of variety and depth in a 1-dimensional space - a line. WAR's T4 RvR endgame is a prime example. It is a line - you have no space to change direction because there is none. There is just that one line, one number, a tug of war between 2 points, 2 factions. The absolutely lowest possible level of complexity that we can still call dynamic (a static point, zero-space is the only lower one)... and it grows old VERY fast I can tell you.
(Btw soz for my english, not a native speaker and it's getting late over here..)
Additionally you are inadvertantly arguing FOR the 3-faction system with your example.
I'm not "inadvertantly" arguing for 3+ factions - I am in favor of it and would argue for it deliberately if I thought it worth my time to type.
But I would argue for it simply because the lore demands it and because it seems to add more depth. NOT because it cures population imbalances. It does nothing of the sort and it seems completely ridiculous to suggest otherwise. I've never seen a 2 faction game that didn't have just as much imbalance as a 3 faction game. Just because we can find an example of a 2 faction game with a population imbalance doesn't mean it would be cured by adding a third - it's smoke screen logic supported by isolated case examples and nothing more.
As for it being less "runaway"... meh. Whether it's 3 to 1 or 5 to 1 against me, I'm probably going to get sick of overwhelming odds and quit the game in short order either way. I don't see this benefit as something worth mentioning.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
Additionally you are inadvertantly arguing FOR the 3-faction system with your example.
I'm not "inadvertantly" arguing for 3+ factions - I am in favor of it and would argue for it deliberately if I thought it worth my time to type.
But I would argue for it simply because the lore demands it and because it seems to add more depth. NOT because it cures population imbalances. It does nothing of the sort and it seems completely ridiculous to suggest otherwise. I've never seen a 2 faction game that didn't have just as much imbalance as a 3 faction game. Just because we can find an example of a 2 faction game with a population imbalance doesn't mean it would be cured by adding a third - it's smoke screen logic supported by isolated case examples and nothing more.
As for it being less "runaway"... meh. Whether it's 3 to 1 or 5 to 1 against me, I'm probably going to get sick of overwhelming odds and quit the game in short order either way. I don't see this benefit as something worth mentioning.
You keep avoiding logic here. 3-faction system is inherently more stable that 2-faction one. It's simple math man. Just add the numbers and see what's going on.
What you are going to see is called a "thought experiment" and I'm doing this one for the last time because frankly I'm tired of repeating the obvious:
Say you have 100 players in a territorial warfare situation. Winners get rewards which motivate them.
2-faction system:
50 vs 50 balance is ok - both sides win in equal proportion.
49 vs 51 balance.... Now we get into trouble. The larger faction gets to win 51% of the time. One of the guys in the weaker faaction (and there is always that one guy, whether you like it or not) says "well I'm playing this game to win, so I'll switch sides." Now you have 48 vs 52 imbalance. Another guy who was thinking "Well my side is loosing more than winning, but not by much, I'm sticking with my faction" now says "We're loosing even more now! This is not good, I'd better switch now before it's too late!" Now you have 47 vs 53 imbalance. And this goes on an on through a series of thresholds until you are left with a serious imbalance with only the diehards playing the constantly loosing side.
This is the runaway positive-feedback loop. See? Very simple.
Yes, you can add incentives for the weaker faction to stick around but this is always gimmicky and ends up in either being unfair (why should my character be gimped for no fault of my own?) or even worse, by rewarding loosing which screws up the whole point (aka player motivation) of the game.
on the other hand, here's the 3-faction system.
33 vs 33 vs 33 - obviously this is working as intended although there's only 99 guys here, one being out for lunch.
35 vs 31 vs 31 - here one faction has 2 guys more than any of the other two. In percentage terms, this one faction has a much bigger initial imbalance than the one in the beginning of the 2-faction example. What happens now? The smaller factions band up and now we have the 35 vs 66 imbalance which puts the bigger faction at a huge disadvantage. The guy we mentioned at the first example says "This is crap man, I'm bugging out! I don't want to be a looser! I'm switching sides!" The imbalance is now 34 vs 65. Other folks say "No' this is even worse! People are leaving! I'm leaving too" until the imbalance is 33 vs 66 at which point the other two factions decide that their alliance has served its purpose, the menace is gone and it would be more profitable to go at each other's throats for a change.
This is the self-regulating negative-feedback loop.
If you have a huge initial imbalance, say 80 % of the people play one faction initially, then even this effect won't save you, I concur and that's a whole new order of problems we have here. However, the whole point of the discussion isn't that 3-faction is good, miraculous and a cure-for-all. The point is that the 2-faction system is inherently unstable, it is BAD for the balance, exactly because of the effect I just described. Again, it is UNSTABLE - in it's very nature. If you leave it alone without any action from your part it will go out of the equilibrium and into the extreme. And it will do it automatically and completely on its own - that's what is meant by the word "inherently" in the "inherently unstable". Basically it is an accident waiting to happen because quite simply it is in it's very nature.
Again, this inherent instability of 2-faction system does not have to be a bad thing. In fact, if you have an instanced match or a particular battle or a sporting event then 2-sides is the way to go, precisely because of its instablitiy which ensures that this particular conflict will have an resultion. At the moment someone starts winning, his chances of actually finishing the thing increases. And that is a GOOD thing with 2-side conflicts. However, if you have a PERMANENT conflict that is supposed to go INDEFINITELY then you do not want this effect to take place. You do not want to end the game - you want to keep it rolling forever.
In short, 3-faction overarching system with 2-faction particular conflicts would be the best. The battles could be fought between 2 opposing factions of the 3 or with 2 factions against 1 in cases of imbalance (which would still make that particular conflict 2-sided, one faction vs the alliance).
And now I'll stfu. End of wall of text.
Go play Risk. How are the matters of balance resolved in that game? With alliances. And can you have alliances with only two players? No? Well duh....
.. or oh ffs, dunno. Just take a potato and stick 2 toothpicks into it. Try to make it stand. Ok? Now stick a third tothpick. Gettit? Now stick a fourth one. What happens? It wobbles. Now take one of the toothpicks out again. What is the most stable form? Kkthnxbai.
so if there are 3 faction example there are the Space Marine, Chaos, Eldar. and there is 25% SM, 25% Chaos, and 50% Eldar, the SM should ally with Chaos? hahah yeah sure.
so if there are 3 faction example there are the Space Marine, Chaos, Eldar. and there is 25% SM, 25% Chaos, and 50% Eldar, the SM should ally with Chaos? hahah yeah sure.
That's a lore problem particular to WH40K, I agree completely.
However if you have more than 3 factions with only some of the combinations possible (as some other posters suggested) - like SMs with IG or even Eldar ocassionally then the aforementrioned problems are more-or-less solved. In fact, 3-faction system might even be TOO stable so basically the more factions the merrier. However this would spread out the population a lot, at least in the classical mmo setup, and imo THQ should rethink that whole concept. The idea of single-server game with multiple planets mentioned elsewhere is imo the best one to explore, both from lore and gameplay perspecitives.
The good thing about IP tho is that there is no need to pay attention to the "players want to be able to choose races freely and yet play together". This is no goddamn Lord of the Rings, thank the emperor. IMO WH40K crowd will be more than happy to play mainly within their own races with only an occasional weirdo tagging along (perhaps.. it would be more accurate to say "occassional werido artillery support from behind that hill so we don't have to look at their ugly xeno mugs")
only going to reply to this once... since its alredy 8 pages long.
2 factions or 3?... I'd say 3... Why?.. Look at DAOC... 3 factions.. and while its had its ups and downs, its still going strong. Look at SOE's Planetside, 3 factions.. still going somewhat strong (havent played it myself in over a year but it still seems to have a following) WAR?... 2 factions.... got boreing realy quick, and from what i can see... is going belly-up in a hurry.... Aion?.. 2 factions... didnt quite get boreing fast as its still new, still fun.. but the pvp in it?.. yea.. its fairly boreing with the lagspikes and such (last pvp i was involved in with more than 8 people one either side... think it was a major keep raid... the lag was so bad i had to turn off player avitars.. which basicaly made everyone includeing the enimies invisable.. yea.. like that works....
3 factions are always better than 2 when it comes to PVP oriented games not because of the risk of unfair fights.. but because it adds some variarity to the game.. Not only do you get to chose to attack.. but every so often you'll actualy see 2 sides working together to attack the 3rd.. Now those litlte peace-treaties never last forever, but it does make for interesting fights... specialy when 2 sides are attacking each other, and a 3rd runs in and attacks both of the others (done that a few times on DAOC hehe)
yeah and if 2 faction just want to destroy completly the weakest faction for fun? and from what I know, people will always attack the weak first, just to farm them. so it will always be 2 vs the poor little faction until the faction is dead
yeah and if 2 faction just want to destroy completly the weakest faction for fun? and from what I know, people will always attack the weak first, just to farm them. so it will always be 2 vs the poor little faction until the faction is dead
Actually usually the 2 weaker take on the one stronger.
But thats the fun in it. You NEVER know what the factions might do that night. Where as in Warhammer, I knew every night Destruction would steamroll Order on my server and there was nothing they could do about it.
Comments
Agreed, Mythic didnt fail because a third faction was missing, they screwed up their own game through stupid choices and had no idea what they were doing. Fact is WHO should of been a decent pvp game, the dev's just blew it and a third faction wouldnt of saved it either
Signed. Three is better than two!
"If all you can say is... "It's awful, it's not innovative, it's ugly, it's blah.." Then you're an unimaginative and unpolished excuse for human life" -eburn
IF this game is to be another Global Agenda, this is a far worse problem than having few factions. I will go play Counterstrike with WH40K skins, it's free and pretty much the same.
I expect this to be a MMO, so no crappy battlegrounds and artificial limits and "fair fights".
No WAR failed because it had shitty point and clicky EQ style combat. It was a WOW clone and it was about as original as my ass.
And I expect this to be fun, and last long.
You have plenty of moribund games to play following your idiotic idea of whats enjoyment, I'd suggest you to buy WAR, feel free to join the winning side in any game server, and satisfy your needs of zerging like a skill less moron until the game goes down because nobody besides you and idiots like you enjoy that crappy excuse for a gameplay.
T4 is an utter bore exactly because it has only 2 factions.
You have points A and B. How much variety can you have if you run from A to B and B to A all the time? If you add C then you can choose A-B, B-C and A-C and there is a 2-dimensional space these 3 points define. It is very simple, really. Take pen and paper if you have trouble visualizing it. THE MAJOR problem of T4 endgame in WAR is that it has only 2 factions, which make it a single-dimensional conflict that progresses along that single, predictable line. There can be no real deviation from that same old line because it is a 1-dimensional array. It is a line, not a plane, not a space - it is a line that you can go up and down, period. Imagine chess whose board is one space wide - fun, no? T4 would be AWESOME, right as it is right now, if they had 3 factions. This is the greatest tragedy of WAR - the way they completely subjected their map design to 2-faction play now makes it nigh impossible to fix this fundamental flaw.
Basic math folks. 2 points define 1-dimensional space. 3 points define a 2-dimensional one. 4 points for a 3-dimensional space and so on. Sorry but even tic-tac-toe is played on a 2-dimensional board. Mythic's decision to have their endgame play out in a 1-dimensional gamespace must rank as one of the dumbest and most clueless game design decisions in HISTORY. If THQ goes this same route you don't have to be a genius to predict what is going to happen. The only way 2-faction can work here is if their PvP is wholly instanced and there is no world PvP, especially game-impacting one at all. Either way, I'm not interested.
I don't mind two factions, though i prefer a bigger number as well, at least 5 let's say. I have seen it working nicely on Face of Mankind (which has 8) and even earlier on single player cRPGs that offer multiple factions as a means of helping you defining your character's choices and background. So, i see it as a tool than enchances roleplaying and under that scope, i fail to see how three factions make it so much different than two... Instead of black & white you add grey, instead of good & evil you add neutral - not very interesting in both cases. It needs more choices to start becoming an interesting political/ethical/whatever game.
On the other hand i had a lot of fun playing Warhammer Online for what it is and under no circumstances i consider it a "fail" game. And all that time i was playing WAR, i have seen a lot of people bashing the game, but for things like lag, performance, bugs, class and realm imbalance - not for its number of factions. It was only a small fraction of players that would bash it for this, and it's not a coincidence they were the DAOC players...
"Traditionally, massively multiplier online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars combat, exploration and character progression. In Alganon, in addition to these we've added the fourth pillar to the equation: Copy & Paste."
3-factions does not mean black - grey -white. This is still 1 dimensional game design. Think rather "red - green -blue". The davs need to get off their cultural bias of "good vs evil" (which is just cultural bias and nothing more tbs) if they want to create a dynamic and yet stable world PvP metagame.
If they still need to create a good vs evil thing to appeal to the cultural framework then a much better way would be to make ALL factions good from their own perspective and evil from everybody elses. In fact I cannot wait to see GW2 WvW in action - servers fighting each other - everybody is "good" and a "hero" from their own perspective, that's the way to do it elegantly.
And besides, multi-factional design is much closer to the IP than the same old good-vs-evil crap, as any WH40K geek would happily point out and argument with decades and mountains of lore.
And no, I didn't play DAoC but I'm an avid WAR player. Sorry, but this "Altdorf to Inevitable City and back again" gets old in a jiffy. For all the good stuff in that game that I'm still playing it for, this really is THE most massive flaw in the endgame - repetetiveness. On the other hand, if it is this day-in-day-out always the same old route thing actually appealing to the "masses" then I can do nothing else but simply leave the genre because I can go didly-up-diddly-down that same old ladder only so many times.
I vote 6-8.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
yeah WoW has PvP... BUT IT'S ALL INSTANCED...
if they do make an RvR like game (here's hoping) you absolutely NEED more than 2 factions... it doesn't matter too much when there's instances which artificially balance the side's numbers... but if it's open world a 60% vs 40% population makes a huge difference. 3 factions help loads with that problem.... DAoC, Planetside = worked perfectly! WAR = was horrible! nuff said
And in terms of WAR... ever been to the EU servers? probably not or you wouldn't generalize like that... yes AoE spam groups weren't a big deal on the US servers... population imbalance wasn't either.... on the EU side of things there were servers with 70% destro and 30% Order... and servers with 80% Order and 20% Destruction... oh yeah and hundreds of AoE spam groups.... oh how much fun it was...
it's not knee-jerk... it's people trying to alert the developers to these problems as early in production as possible to avoid yet ANOTHER Failhammer.... because I do believe that a lot of people would love a great Games Workshop MMO...
<S.T.E.A.L.T.H>
An Agency that kicks so much ass it has to be written in all capital letters... divided by dots!
www.stealth-industries.de
You are making a lot of assumptions there. All totally wrong.
War isn't "fair" nor is a soccer game you "arrange". It's about tactics and strategy. With instanced pvp you just enqueue and then it's a grind. No objectives, no strategic decisions to make (where to strike, how many people to bring, diversions to make, surprise attacks, ambushes), it's just enter a small area, kill, die, rinse and repeat.
Rergardless of whether Order Vs destro was the downfall of Mythic. It certainly didn't slow down the process, WAR40k cannot allow orks and csm to work together or eldar and space marines to make love childs. It's as simple as that.
Mythic capping zones for population and kick out players from the zone once it reached it's limit was a lazy fix to a huge problem. They basically implemented that because they failed to properly make the servers ready for 400+vs400+ fights and now you get 100vs100. I was the the day the server finally got to the first fortress and the game crashed because mythic's servers failed to accomodate for the action that was going on.
Capping zones and making instance fights is not the solution to zergs it's just adding on to the problem and make the fights more theme parked then they already are.
My ideal RvR game is a game where it has the potetional to have 500vs500vs500vs500 or more instead of small skirmishes that WAR has been reduced to. The city siege is a joke compared to what they used to tell us and the beta testing. Stop making excuses for bad ideas and embrace something new!
Hell there is a game that is F2P called Aika that is doing 100x better then WAR right now and it has multiple factions to choose from and on top of that it has a WAY bigger large scale battles then WAR... WTF does that tell you seriousely... that a F2P game just released this year is beating WAR in the RVR aspect.
Several factions and starting areas and no levels!
I'd like to see more than 2 factions, just to emulate some of the various scenarios possible from the tabletop game.
But I think it's completely ridiculous to suggest that 3 factions are immune to population imbalances. Certainly it's less of an issue because the population is more dispersed, but Planetside had massive imbalance for almost a year because every little nub signed up as New Conglomerate and nobody went with Vanu. Trying to paint population balance as the sole reason for creating extra factions sounds... shallow. The developers aren't that stupid and most of the adults reading this thread aren't stupid enough to believe it either.
Personally I'd like to see 3 or more factions because gameplay seems to have more depth in those cases. If I get bored fighting faction A, I can find a fight against faction B. Even if it's the same gameplay with different skins, sometimes a change of scenary is all it takes. But I'm nowhere near the realm of convinced that 3 or more factions will suddenly prevent every 13 year old goth kid in the US and Europe from signing up as Chaos. There hasn't been a shred of evidence here, or even logical conjecture, to make me think otherwise.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
Wait wait... did you just call posters arguing that 3-faction system is inherently more stable than a 2-faction one stupid and childish?
This attitude is not going to get you far.
And did you even properly read the arguments? Who said that 3-faction games are immune to population imbalances? No one as far as I can see. The argument is that they are less sensitive to pop imbalances, especially runaway ones, and that has been argued pretty well both in theory and with actual game examples.
Additionally you are inadvertantly arguing FOR the 3-faction system with your example. If there IS a radically more popular faction then this is much more of a problem in a 2-faction than in 3-faction game. It's simple math really. Adding stuff you know, basic algebra. It won't stop every goth kid in US and Europe from signing up chaos but the overall impact on game balance will be much less pronounced than in a 2-faction game. 2-sided conflicts are inherently plagued with runaway positive feedback loops - one side is slightly more powerful, players being humans they are tend to go to the winning side more than loosing one and the problem aggravates. It is a chain reaction, a positive feedback loop that is dictated by human nature. A 3 or more faction system wont completely remove this mechanic but it has shown that the threshold of initial imbalance needed for this runaway chain reaction to take place gets massively raised. In fact, in a 2-faction system this threshold is so low that for all practical purposes it can be considered as always crossed and the runaway positive feedback loop is omnipresent. Let me further clarify what I mean:
In a 2 faction game it is enough for one faction to be 1% more populated than the other one for this runaway effect to start manifesting itself. In a 3 faction game where lower populated factions band against the stronger one, you would need that one faction to be more populous than other two put together. In a four faction system, each of the weakest factions would need to be three times less populous than the lagest one (tho 3-faction is still the most stable one, but I won't go further into that, ask a mathematician, preferably a topologist) ... See? This is why multi-faction systems are ALWAYS more stable than the 2-faction one, because 2-faction system is INHERENTLY unstable, and that is true on more levels of existence then I'd care to list. Just one example - there IS a reason why bipeds are so rare in animal world. It is crazy what amount of processing human brain has to make with each step which is basically nothing more than controlled fall - again inherently unstable system. Trying to make a biped robot walk is still one of the hardest problems in robotics while other methods of locomotion have been much easier to crack, especially three-legged ones which are the most stable and easiest to program, both on the level of algorithm and processing power required.
If you know an engineer ask him why are the steel lattices on bridges always in the form of equilateral triangles. And no, aesthetics have nothing to do with it.
While you're at it you might also ask him why is all control wiring in airplanes done in triplicate. Not 2 wires, not 4 or 5 wires but 3 wires.
Diamond is the hardest substance known to man. What is it's crystal lattice made out of? Check it out - equlateral triangles extrapolated into 3-dimensional space, aka tetrahedrons.
On the other hand, why are competetive sports played out in opposing teams, 2-factions? Because they NEED to be unstable so someone eventually gets to win. But this is definitely NOT something we want to see in a game which is supposed to run indefinitely and which is permanent. We have a basic conflict of core concepts here. A MMO is NOT a "classical" game where someone is supposed to "win" eventually and thus end the game. This is the LAST thing you want in a game that is supposed to be played indefinitely. You might have temporal and shifting 2-faction conflicts in a mmo, and that's all fun and well and the basis of all drama, but for chirissakes don't build your whole house on the inherently unstable structure.
As for more depth and variety to gameplay. Yes of course. As I mentioned before 2 points define a line, 1-dimesional space; 3 points define 2-dimensional space etc. You cannot have anything resembling any kind of variety and depth in a 1-dimensional space - a line. WAR's T4 RvR endgame is a prime example. It is a line - you have no space to change direction because there is none. There is just that one line, one number, a tug of war between 2 points, 2 factions. The absolutely lowest possible level of complexity that we can still call dynamic (a static point, zero-space is the only lower one)... and it grows old VERY fast I can tell you.
(Btw soz for my english, not a native speaker and it's getting late over here..)
I'm not "inadvertantly" arguing for 3+ factions - I am in favor of it and would argue for it deliberately if I thought it worth my time to type.
But I would argue for it simply because the lore demands it and because it seems to add more depth. NOT because it cures population imbalances. It does nothing of the sort and it seems completely ridiculous to suggest otherwise. I've never seen a 2 faction game that didn't have just as much imbalance as a 3 faction game. Just because we can find an example of a 2 faction game with a population imbalance doesn't mean it would be cured by adding a third - it's smoke screen logic supported by isolated case examples and nothing more.
As for it being less "runaway"... meh. Whether it's 3 to 1 or 5 to 1 against me, I'm probably going to get sick of overwhelming odds and quit the game in short order either way. I don't see this benefit as something worth mentioning.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
You keep avoiding logic here. 3-faction system is inherently more stable that 2-faction one. It's simple math man. Just add the numbers and see what's going on.
What you are going to see is called a "thought experiment" and I'm doing this one for the last time because frankly I'm tired of repeating the obvious:
Say you have 100 players in a territorial warfare situation. Winners get rewards which motivate them.
2-faction system:
50 vs 50 balance is ok - both sides win in equal proportion.
49 vs 51 balance.... Now we get into trouble. The larger faction gets to win 51% of the time. One of the guys in the weaker faaction (and there is always that one guy, whether you like it or not) says "well I'm playing this game to win, so I'll switch sides." Now you have 48 vs 52 imbalance. Another guy who was thinking "Well my side is loosing more than winning, but not by much, I'm sticking with my faction" now says "We're loosing even more now! This is not good, I'd better switch now before it's too late!" Now you have 47 vs 53 imbalance. And this goes on an on through a series of thresholds until you are left with a serious imbalance with only the diehards playing the constantly loosing side.
This is the runaway positive-feedback loop. See? Very simple.
Yes, you can add incentives for the weaker faction to stick around but this is always gimmicky and ends up in either being unfair (why should my character be gimped for no fault of my own?) or even worse, by rewarding loosing which screws up the whole point (aka player motivation) of the game.
on the other hand, here's the 3-faction system.
33 vs 33 vs 33 - obviously this is working as intended although there's only 99 guys here, one being out for lunch.
35 vs 31 vs 31 - here one faction has 2 guys more than any of the other two. In percentage terms, this one faction has a much bigger initial imbalance than the one in the beginning of the 2-faction example. What happens now? The smaller factions band up and now we have the 35 vs 66 imbalance which puts the bigger faction at a huge disadvantage. The guy we mentioned at the first example says "This is crap man, I'm bugging out! I don't want to be a looser! I'm switching sides!" The imbalance is now 34 vs 65. Other folks say "No' this is even worse! People are leaving! I'm leaving too" until the imbalance is 33 vs 66 at which point the other two factions decide that their alliance has served its purpose, the menace is gone and it would be more profitable to go at each other's throats for a change.
This is the self-regulating negative-feedback loop.
If you have a huge initial imbalance, say 80 % of the people play one faction initially, then even this effect won't save you, I concur and that's a whole new order of problems we have here. However, the whole point of the discussion isn't that 3-faction is good, miraculous and a cure-for-all. The point is that the 2-faction system is inherently unstable, it is BAD for the balance, exactly because of the effect I just described. Again, it is UNSTABLE - in it's very nature. If you leave it alone without any action from your part it will go out of the equilibrium and into the extreme. And it will do it automatically and completely on its own - that's what is meant by the word "inherently" in the "inherently unstable". Basically it is an accident waiting to happen because quite simply it is in it's very nature.
Again, this inherent instability of 2-faction system does not have to be a bad thing. In fact, if you have an instanced match or a particular battle or a sporting event then 2-sides is the way to go, precisely because of its instablitiy which ensures that this particular conflict will have an resultion. At the moment someone starts winning, his chances of actually finishing the thing increases. And that is a GOOD thing with 2-side conflicts. However, if you have a PERMANENT conflict that is supposed to go INDEFINITELY then you do not want this effect to take place. You do not want to end the game - you want to keep it rolling forever.
In short, 3-faction overarching system with 2-faction particular conflicts would be the best. The battles could be fought between 2 opposing factions of the 3 or with 2 factions against 1 in cases of imbalance (which would still make that particular conflict 2-sided, one faction vs the alliance).
And now I'll stfu. End of wall of text.
Go play Risk. How are the matters of balance resolved in that game? With alliances. And can you have alliances with only two players? No? Well duh....
.. or oh ffs, dunno. Just take a potato and stick 2 toothpicks into it. Try to make it stand. Ok? Now stick a third tothpick. Gettit? Now stick a fourth one. What happens? It wobbles. Now take one of the toothpicks out again. What is the most stable form? Kkthnxbai.
p.s. and here's a nice primer for anyone wanting to join this merry debate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory
so if there are 3 faction example there are the Space Marine, Chaos, Eldar. and there is 25% SM, 25% Chaos, and 50% Eldar, the SM should ally with Chaos? hahah yeah sure.
Couldnt sign the petition, its throwing some errors, but I've hit up the facebook pages.
That's a lore problem particular to WH40K, I agree completely.
However if you have more than 3 factions with only some of the combinations possible (as some other posters suggested) - like SMs with IG or even Eldar ocassionally then the aforementrioned problems are more-or-less solved. In fact, 3-faction system might even be TOO stable so basically the more factions the merrier. However this would spread out the population a lot, at least in the classical mmo setup, and imo THQ should rethink that whole concept. The idea of single-server game with multiple planets mentioned elsewhere is imo the best one to explore, both from lore and gameplay perspecitives.
The good thing about IP tho is that there is no need to pay attention to the "players want to be able to choose races freely and yet play together". This is no goddamn Lord of the Rings, thank the emperor. IMO WH40K crowd will be more than happy to play mainly within their own races with only an occasional weirdo tagging along (perhaps.. it would be more accurate to say "occassional werido artillery support from behind that hill so we don't have to look at their ugly xeno mugs")
How can orks even side with anyone!
This is mind boggling!
Currently playing Everquest on Project1999
only going to reply to this once... since its alredy 8 pages long.
2 factions or 3?... I'd say 3... Why?.. Look at DAOC... 3 factions.. and while its had its ups and downs, its still going strong. Look at SOE's Planetside, 3 factions.. still going somewhat strong (havent played it myself in over a year but it still seems to have a following) WAR?... 2 factions.... got boreing realy quick, and from what i can see... is going belly-up in a hurry.... Aion?.. 2 factions... didnt quite get boreing fast as its still new, still fun.. but the pvp in it?.. yea.. its fairly boreing with the lagspikes and such (last pvp i was involved in with more than 8 people one either side... think it was a major keep raid... the lag was so bad i had to turn off player avitars.. which basicaly made everyone includeing the enimies invisable.. yea.. like that works....
3 factions are always better than 2 when it comes to PVP oriented games not because of the risk of unfair fights.. but because it adds some variarity to the game.. Not only do you get to chose to attack.. but every so often you'll actualy see 2 sides working together to attack the 3rd.. Now those litlte peace-treaties never last forever, but it does make for interesting fights... specialy when 2 sides are attacking each other, and a 3rd runs in and attacks both of the others (done that a few times on DAOC hehe)
I think it will be sm and chaos at start. Then will add other factions to play ^^
yeah and if 2 faction just want to destroy completly the weakest faction for fun? and from what I know, people will always attack the weak first, just to farm them. so it will always be 2 vs the poor little faction until the faction is dead
Actually usually the 2 weaker take on the one stronger.
But thats the fun in it. You NEVER know what the factions might do that night. Where as in Warhammer, I knew every night Destruction would steamroll Order on my server and there was nothing they could do about it.